Olympus C-3030Z Review

Design

Looks very funky doesn't it? Olympus has realized how
important the finish and build quality is to retail sales. The C-2020Z
was a little too plastic and fragile feeling, the C-3030Z is a vast improvement,
now the whole case (apart from the compartment doors) is that magnesium
alloy we've seen before. The nice mottled industrial matte look is quite
nice too and gives the camera a quality feel.

Here, compared to the C-2020Z you can see very little
has changed, the slightly thicker hand grip, repositioned and redesigned
neck strap clips and body material changes.

In Hand

Weight
balance is good, the camera tends most of its weight into the palm of
your hand, it's noticeably lighter than the 990 and thus becomes more
portable because of it (it's also smaller). The camera does feel good
in your hand most of the controls are easily within reach.

One thing I'd like to reiterate at this point is I wish
digital camera manufacturers would realize that these cameras are hand
cameras, not neck cameras.. A decent hand strap on the side of the camera
would be perfect for carrying the camera (I find myself looping the neck
strap around my wrist and holding it that way).

Rear LCD Display

The
Rear LCD on the C-3030Z is the same as found on the C-2020Z, it has good
brightness and very good viewing angles (though I'd really like to have
seen Olympus break the mould here and let it flip-out Pro70 style)...

There's a good range of brightness adjustment and the
protective cover is very thick.. Would have been nice to have a non-reflective
coating here, it suffers from the same trouble as the 990 LCD cover, in
bright light all you can see is your own face...

One slight disappointment with the camera I had for review
were two stuck pixels (both green).

Top Information LCD

The top information LCD (or "Control Panel" as it's referred)
is almost identical to that found on the C-2020Z, there is additional
information this time, and some of the feature icons have been shuffled
around.

Something I would like to have seen on this LCD is camera mode
(P/A/S/M), aperture and shutter speed.

Below is a diagram shamelessly scanned (and edited) from the supplied
manual.

Viewfinder

The viewfinder on the C-3030Z is identical to that of the C-2020Z,
and still too small to be used seriously. There's a easily accessible
dioptric adjustment on the side of the viewfinder.

Frame coverage through the viewfinder is about 85% which means
that using the viewfinder you're only looking at 85% of what will
be captured.

The view through the viewfinder gives you a targeted AF area, unfortunately
there aren't any parallax error lines which means if you take shots
less than a 1m from the camera you're likely to misalign the frame.

Rear light indicator shows the status of:

Green
& Orange Blinking

Flash Charging

Orange Steady

Flash charged and will
fire

Orange Blinking

Slow shot, blur likely
due to shake

Green Steady

AF: focus lock, ready
to shoot

Green Blinking

AF: Unable to focus
lock

Battery Compartment

The battery compartment on the C-3030Z is a vast improvement
over the one found on the C-2020Z. Now it's easy to load and unload batteries
with one hand, a small latch locks the door closed. The orientation of
the batteries has changed which makes the hand grip thicker (deeper?)
and facilitates the use of Olympus's proprietary Lithium CR-V3 batteries...

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